Arena of Heroes (Review)

Arena of Heroes is the thinking man’s MOBA. A wild claim? Perhaps, but Arena of Heroes is focused far more on strategy, planning, and combinations than on surprising an opponent with a quick button press. It’s more akin to a game of chess than to popular multiplayer online battle arenas. Well, presuming you use chess pieces that include a chain-gun wielding rabbit from space. I’m taking a wild guess here that you probably don’t. Maybe you should be reconsidering how you enjoy turn based strategy.

A Tactical MOBA

Arena of Heroes throws aside the more traditional twitch-based action of recent games in favor of a well designed turn-based action economy. That’s right, turn-based. Mind blown yet? Each player is given 3 minutes to choose actions for their heroes each turn, so the pace of the game continues to move along even if your opponent is paralyzed by fear of your awesomeness. In simple terms, you can move and attack on your turn. However, if you tend to think a few steps ahead of your enemy you can set up amazing combos to devastate and drop some jaws. There’s also an asynchronous mode coming soon that will extend turn duration to 3 days so that you can play games with friends that may not always be able to be online at the same time as you.

The battlefield is a cool sci-fi themed 3 lane setup with a defense tower at the end of each guarding the respective home bases of the players. The first part of every game is determining your opening strategy by placing your heroes on the field. Do you split them among all of the lanes? Do you focus fire on a single lane and hope to overpower? Between each player round, the minions get a chance to do their thing with the defense towers going last and dealing massive damage to a single target in range. So be real sure you want to put a hero in the line of fire if you’re going to end a turn next to one of those murder pillars since they will get two turns before you act again.

Something for everyone

Arena of Heroes brings cross platform carnage to the masses. Gamers are able to join the fight on PC, Mac, and iOS devices. So whether you want to sit down at your giant computer monitor and enjoy every minute pixel of detail or you’re looking for something to help ease your commute, Arena of Heroes has got you covered. The sci-fi artwork in the game is fantastic. The roster of available heroes continues to grow on a regular basis. Personally, I’m looking forward to adding the Cthulhu inspired Metus to my regular lineup. The combinations of characters and powers is going to continue to expand frequently.

My recommendation: give it a shot

Arena of Heroes may not be what you’re accustomed to, but you have nothing to lose by trying it out and flexing your gaming muscles. I was skeptical about how well it would work out, but I bought a founder pack, got immediate beta access and started playing. I was blown away by how easy Arena of Heroes is to pick up and how much fun it is to try to master. When the game officially launches, play for free and see for yourself how it handles. With upcoming multiple platform support and an asynchronous mode for when you can’t sit down to a full match, there is no reason why Arena of Heroes shouldn’t be on your gaming radar.